Grief
by thisisforyou
Summary: Aberforth, at the moment and then the realisation of his brother's death. One-shot.


**Aberforth's POV. I like this one, if I do say so myself. Though, sensitive ears beware, he doesn't have the cleanest mouth. That 'b' word I'm so fond of at the moment comes out once or twice.**

* * *

The bar is silent, empty, its rusty sign creaking even though there is no wind. No-one visits _The Hog's Head_ this late at night, not when Death Eaters roam the streets disguised as smiling friends. On any night, the barman doesn't mind.

Any night but this. He paces fretfully, his feet wearing down the many years of neglect coating the floor, pausing by the window each time his ceaseless feet carry him past it. Each time, the hideous, blinding emblem of the enemy stares resolutely back from its perch above the silhouetted castle.

He stops before the window again, and this time he seems to make up his mind; he draws a short, knobbly wand from a fold in his robes and makes for the door. Then he halts abruptly and stows the wand angrily back, muttering to himself as he begins pacing fitfully once more.

A flash of green lights up the castle tower, pouring through the window like sickly moonbeams. The barman jumps and crouches, frozen as a rabbit freezes in the glare of car headlights. He stares out of his window, not daring to move. After a long moment, he turns away. He does not see the flash of silver hair so like his own as a lifeless body tumbles from the top of the tower.

The barman resumes his steady pacing, pausing under the window each time to look at the people gathering under the tower where the body fell, though the silver-haired barman did not see it fall. He paces on.

* * *

Tentatively, as though afraid of what it may find in the castle grounds, the blazing sun climbs into the sky. With a grunt, the barman jerks awake, wrenching his face from where it had lain on the dusty table. The grinning skull has gone from the pink sky above the table. The grounds lie empty.

The barman looks around the deserted bar before heaving his stocky body out of the straight-backed chair and stumping up a staircase behind the bar. He emerges in a smaller room, an armchair pulled close to an empty fireplace, a tall portrait of a pale, light-haired girl watching from above it. He throws his body into an armchair and stares absently at the portrait, which does not speak, but simply blinks down at him as the morning light strengthens.

A fire bursts into life in the grate, stirring the barman from his reverie. He glances worriedly at the face the fire brings: a tired, stern face, its grey hair pulled back into a tight bun. The barman looks at it warily as it opens its mouth.

"Aberforth -" it begins, but the barman, Aberforth, cuts across it, his blue eyes hard.

"He's dead, isn't he?" Tears well up in the woman's eyes as she nods slowly. Aberforth lets out a long, slow breath and lets his body slump back into the chair. He looks back at the fire. "Who?"

A shadow crosses the woman's lined face. "Severus Snape," she replies evenly, a tear sliding down her straight nose.

Rage flares in Aberforth's sapphire eyes, blinding, consuming rage that burns like the fire reflected palely inside them. He jumps out of his seat. "Snape! That bastard - I never trusted - I _told_ him! I did!" He strides angrily across the room, kicking savagely at the rumpled edge of the rug. "He never _listened _to me! Never!" To accentuate this last word, he strikes out and punches the wall, but it doesn't seem to help; his molten rage quietens as he shakes out his bruised fingers and turns back to the woman in the fire. "Thank you for telling me," he says as calmly as he can. She shakes her head, more tears spilling from her eyes.

"The funeral is tomorrow, here at Hogwarts," she says, her stern voice quivering. He nods silently, seemingly wrestling with himself. The woman's head vanishes from the flames, and the violent fire crackles and fades without her. Aberforth flops back into his armchair and is silent for a very long time.

A sob escapes his white lips. Tears slip from his sapphire eyes and he begins to rock where he sits, his knees drawn up to his chest, his eyes screwed tightly shut. "Oh, Ariana, Ariana," he cries softly, opening his eyes to gaze at the girl in the portrait. "You're all gone now. All gone."

The girl crouches in her dark frame, the candle clutched in her fingers as she stretches the other delicate hand out imploringly to the sobbing barman.

"What will they do now, Ariana?" he whispers, looking down at his clenched fingers. "Without him? What will the boy do?"

The girl kneels, her hand still outreached, pleading. Then her voice rings out, pure and tinkling. "At least _you_ didn't kill him," she says, and in Aberforth's mind her voice echoes, torturing. "At least you didn't kill him, like you killed me."

"No!" he gasps, looking at the pale girl in horror. "I didn't! I never - you can't say - be kind, Ariana!"

"Maybe if I had lived a life as long as yours I would have learned kindness," the girl continues, her delicate face hardening. "Maybe if _he_ hadn't had to give you a second chance then, he wouldn't have felt he had to give Snape the same. Who knows? Maybe you did kill him." To the tortured barman, his hands balled into white-knuckled fists, her youthful face seems to twist into a mocking leer.

"Don't say that!" he screams, throwing his hands over his ears, rocking faster in his chair. "I didn't! Don't say that!"

The candle flares dangerously in the girl's pale hand as she stands and watches him for a while longer, her blue eyes sad, then walks away from her brother, the barman, Aberforth, down the passageway in her dark portrait.

Left alone, Aberforth's sobs subside and for the first time, he lets himself hear the soft, keening song of the phoenix's lament for a brother that everyone had loved.

* * *

**Yep. That's all for now, I need to get back to Black Thoughts, and I'm doing a follow-up shot to my drabble **_**Egg and Sperm **_**that promises to be funny. Not to mention that exams are only a few short weeks away, but people like me are too busy dreaming to study. Eventually, you'll see Malfoy here, and Hagrid, and McGonagall. And others. Later.**

**-For you.**


End file.
